A potpourri of news items you may have missed on a source of EHR ‘errors’, ICU telemedicine and new companies.
- Copying and pasting patient documentation into an EHR can be problematic. A recent study of over 5,900 patients by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (abstract link), concluded that ‘recycling’ earlier notes into progress notes containing information on lifestyle counseling with diabetic patients had the same result on a key diabetes indicator as no counseling at all. Does it reflect care given is left open. Endocrine Today
- Neonatal intensive care unit (NICUs) getting helping hand from robots. Offsite neonatalogists are successfully examining infant patients at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles using a telemedicine robot with video and audio capabilities, plus a stethoscope, to see and hear their patients, with results largely comparable to onsite physicians. FierceMobileHealthcare Journal of Perinatology
- Find me a specialist for a second opinion–quickly. Been in this situation? 2nd.MD is a new website set up to make it easier to do that. The person can identify physicians by specialty, location or affiliation, and then 2nd.MD puts specialist and patient in touch for a telehealth consult. Will patients trust the website, and will health systems adopt it? Oh yes–private pay too. FierceMobileHealthcare (but it’s not mobile) 2nd.MD website
- How you use your smartphone can indicate your state of health. Farfetched? Spinoff from the MIT Media Lab Ginger.io says not. Their DailyData app is based on the connection of changes in medication and mood to movement and communication. The app determines everyday use patterns, then looks at current location, frequency of calls and texting usage, sending out alerts to the person if off the baseline, which may indicate a health change–all automatically. Investor attraction: a ready market for the data in health insurers, providers and –what else?–pharma companies. MIT Technology Review. Boston Globe on TechStars Boston, an incubator with a equity twist.